Latin Redux St. Roch's Among Churches Returning To Tridentine Mass

September 24, 1998|by JOHN LEMING (A free-lance story for The Morning Call).

"In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

The sounds of Latin, which haven't been heard in most Roman Catholic churches in decades, are now filling St. Roch's in West Bangor every week.

On a recent Sunday, about 50 worshipers joined Monsignor Charles T. Moss as he celebrated the Tridentine Mass, as the old Latin-language rite is called, at the church named for a medieval saint who reportedly could cure the plague.

Worshipers at a recent 9:20 a.m. Mass ran the gamut from older people down to small children, and were dressed formally.

Most of the women covered their heads, either with long, lace mantillas or with short, lace chaplets, in conformity to St. Paul's teaching that women should cover their hair while at prayer.

But St. Roch's isn't some sort of breakaway parish. Instead, it's one of small, but growing number of Catholic churches around the world that have gone back to Latin.

"We actually started the old, traditional Mass back in about 1995," said Moss.

Moss said he got permission from former Allentown Diocese Bishop Thomas T. Welsh to do it monthly.

Then, after Bishop Edward P. Cullen was installed earlier this year in the Allentown post, Moss petitioned for permission to celebration it every week. Cullen gave the OK in June, Moss said.

"We decided to start it in September."

Latin Masses can only be celebrated in addition to, not in lieu of, Masses in the vernacular, which are held at St. Roch's at 5 p.m. on Saturdays and at 8 and 11 a.m. on Sundays.

Moss said he was prompted to make his request by members of the congregation, which numbers about 250. He added that he had been expecting to pull in mostly an older crowd, and was surprised to find that "the great percentage of people who come to the traditional Latin Mass are young people with small children."

In the traditional Mass, the priest stands before the altar, with his back to the congregation, for much of the ceremony.

Worshipers follow along in missals, which contain Latin and English versions of what's going on. The priest faces the congregation during the homily, the Catholic term for sermon, which is delivered in English, after the reading of the Gospel.

The move back to the Latin Mass is part of a journey the Roman Catholic Church embarked on in the early 1960s with the Vatican II reforms, which were designed to realign the church more closely with the modern world.

One early manifestation of these reforms was permission to say the Mass in the vernacular. By 1965, "99.9 percent of the Masses (in the United States) were in the vernacular," said William J. Leininger, vice chairman of the Latin Liturgy Association of Baton Rouge, La., a lay Catholic group that backs the use of Latin.

The issue was complicated by the development of a new, simplified Mass, which was implemented in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

Leininger said Catholic churches may celebrate the new Mass in Latin, but permission to say the Tridentine Mass still is required under a 1984 policy promulgated by Pope John Paul II and expanded in 1988.

Leininger, a Staten Island, N.Y., attorney, said there are about 300 approved Tridentine Masses celebrated every Sunday in the United States, and about 100 new rite Masses are said in Latin. In addition, he said, about 100 unapproved Tridentine Masses also take place.

Considering that there are well over 10,000 Catholic parishes in the United States, he conceded that these numbers are "pretty small. We're not talking about a huge numerical movement."

"I said that Mass for the first 10 years as a priest," said Pocetto, who also is a professor in the Center Valley college's philosophy and theology department.

Pocetto said the church began encouraging the use of the vernacular "because much of the communal aspect of the Mass was being lost."

The fact that the priest faced away from the congregation, Pocetto said, "left the people kind of cold and distant from the celebration of the Mass." Further, he said, congregations "weren't paying attention to what was being said."

"Latin originally was the vernacular language," Pocetto observed, noting that under the later Roman empire, it was a language just about everybody understood. "Personally, I think the most important thing is that (Mass) be celebrated in a language you can understand."

Beyond that, said Pocetto, the church doesn't like to see people pulled from their own parishes to another parish, but instead to be "centered around the Eucharist in your own parish. Mass is intended to create that unity."

Pocetto continued, "That's why it's so important for people to understand what they're doing. Ritual can become very routine and mechanical. We must understand what those actions mean."

Pocetto said he understands why some people feel the new Masses have gone too far. "The twanging of guitars can get to people if it's not done properly," he observed.